This invention relates to surgical dressings and, more particularly, to surgical dressings in the form of booklets made to carry the electrical leads of a pacemaker tucked into pockets formed by pages of the booklet or wrapped around notches disposed in the ends of the booklet pages so that such leads are separated by the pages of the booklet and remain tangle free and available for rapid insertion into a mechanical device to stabilize a faltering or accelerating heartbeat following surgery, and more particularly, heart surgery.
At the present time following open heart surgery, electrical leads will be surgically attached to a patient's heart and left protruding from an opening in the patient's chest so that such leads can be inserted into a pacemaker or monitoring machine if the patient's heartbeat is fibrillating or faltering so that external means can be used to stabilize the heartbeat without resort to additional surgery to reopen the chest cavity. Typically, each opening in a patient's chest will carry both a positive and a negative wire, and incisions might be made under each rib cavity so that a patient would have four wires dangling from his or her chest. Such leads are inconvenient and unsightly and frequently tangle or pull. They may require manual separation if it becomes necessary to attach the leads to a pacemaker machine.
The present invention responds to the disadvantages set forth above by employing a dressing in booklet form which receives and separates the negative and positive wires protruding from the patient's chest and stores them in pockets formed by the pages of the dressing or, alternatively, by coiling them around notched pages of the dressing so the leads are neatly separated and quickly inserted into the negative and positive receptacles of a pacemaker machine.
Additionally, the dressing of the present invention is easy to assemble and requires a minimum of labor, thereby making the dressings inexpensive to manufacture and dispose after use.